This paper discusses how real-life statistical analysis/inference deviates from ideal environments. More specifically, there often exist models that have equal statistical power as the actual data-generating model, given only limited information and information processing/computation capacity....

[Update: Within four weeks of the original publication of this research report, Risk Magazine reported in its 28th February 2012 issue story titled 'Goodbye VaR? Basel to Consider Other Risk Metrics': "A review of trading book capital rules, due to be launched in March by the Basel Committee on...

Recent periods of market turbulence and stress have created considerable interest in credible alternatives to traditional asset allocation methodologies. It would be preferred if portfolios can be decomposed into components that can be directly connected to independent risks and individually...

In aftermath of the Financial Crisis, some risk management practitioners advocate wider adoption of Bayesian inference to replace Value-at-Risk (VaR) models for minimizing risk failures (Borison & Hamm, 2010). They claim reliance of Bayesian inference on subjective judgment, the key limitation...

An influential observation has the potential to render a model unsuitable for estimation with an OLS regression. This is well known in the statistics literature. However, the use of standard measures for detecting and managing influential observations is not common practice in empirical finance....

This study sheds new light on the question of whether or not sentiment surveys, and the expectations derived from them, are relevant to forecasting economic growth and stock returns, and whether they contain information that is orthogonal to macroeconomic and financial data. I examine 16...

For decades, the academic literature has focused on three survey measures of expected inflation: the Livingston Survey, the Survey of Professional Forecasters, and the Michigan Survey. While these measures have been useful in developing models of forecasting inflation, the data are low frequency...

Much of the trading activity in Equity markets is directed to brokerage houses. In exchange they provide so-called quot;soft dollarsquot; which basically are amounts spent in quot;researchquot; for identifying profitable trading opportunities. Soft dollars represent about USD 1 out of every USD...

The globalisation on financial markets and the development of financial derivatives has increased not only chances but also potential risk within the banking industry. Especially market risk has gained major significance since market price variation of interest rates, stocks or exchange rates...